Before we Were Sushi: The High School Days

(The Sushi 12 Breakdown begins Wednesday, March 16th… Follow me on Twitter HERE for updates!)

It’s sad but this will be my final post before I break down the Sushi 12. In general, I have been really 😦 lately. So I did the one thing that ALWAYS cheers me up. I started looking through my old albums (remember- before there was Facebook), and it got me thinking. Before we were even members of the Sushi 12, life was so much easier: carpools, backyards, handjobs… the simple things in life. And so, today, I present my final list.

Before We Were Sushi: The High School Days

Freshman Year: “Forever Young.”

1. You got to high school and discovered the most A-MAZING thing in the world… Older boys.
2. The freshman boys immediately became way too immature so you started dating a junior.
3. You referred to hooking up as “getting ass.”
4. You gave your first handjob in a movie theatre during one of the following classic SushFilms:
5. For Bros- Old School, Fight Club and Good Will Hunting (Obv developed a Boston accent after this one).
6. For Sushettes- The Notebook, The Sweetest Thing or 10 Things I Hate About You. (Heath…so tragic! He was so talented and so young!)
7. You then found out that the boy you eventually got to sloppy third with had a junior girlfriend (I swear I didn’t know).
8. From that point on, all of the older girls screamed “slut” when you walked down the hall. Or SLOOOOT. Or smut.
9. Your parents went out of town so you and your girls (who had an A-mazing nickname… we were “The Ghetto Butterflies”) hosted a party for all the older boys – BIGGEST DEAL EVER. The party was obv A-mazing but the fall out was really bad. (Private Equity Boy in Training raided your parents’ liquor cabinet! “NAICE”…)
10. So you were grounded for two weeks, stuck with only your computer. Thank god for AIM!
11. AIM screen name for SushBros in Training = (favorite sport, athlete, camp name or simply DMB) + “kid” + (birth year, “3”, or “23”) e.g. Laxkid1985 or Iverson3
12. AIM screen name for Sushettes in Training= (First name or First Name shortened) + (Your Birthday or XOX) e.g. Linds311 or AliXOX.
13. Coolest moment of a Sushbro in Training’s Life- The first time he drank a 40.
14. His ensemble porn tape- from when Cinemax had free weekend promotions- was named “Dawson’s Creek 2/28/99.” (Parentals would NEVER suspect that one)
15. Most damaging 12 hours of a Sushette’s life- Smoked pot for the first time which resulted in eating an entire box of Oreos which caused your first (and hopefully last) eating disorder.
16. You make the smooth transition from Haagen Dazs to Tasti D-Lite… (They totes taste the same!)
17. January 14th, 2001- 2:28PM EST- the most memorable moment of your life- you learned what a carbohydrate is.

Upper Classmen: “Those were the best days of my life.”

18. After getting out of AP Environmental Science (APES!).
19. You immediately start hazing the freshmen on the soccer team. (Duh, we were Juniors! Ever seen Dazed and Confused? I was SO Parker Posey!)
20. You call the freshman girl who hooked up with the senior guy a SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
21. You then lose your virginity some time between October-March. (When it’s Brrrr- cold outside- and there is nothing better to do)
22. While American kids grow up dreading work at Dairy Queen or biking their local paper route- Sushi kids have a MUCH more annoying job- GOING TO YOUR SAT TUTOR!
23. Flash cards! You would not be part of the Sushi 12 legacy without them.
24. 9 months later, you take the SAT’s for the third time. When you take your best Math and English, you did better than Ali, tied Jordana and did worse than Melissa (NERD!). Nicole won’t tell us what she got (Bitch!) But now the most A-mazing part…the SAT II’s!
25. You take like 50 of them so that you could be ready for…The college application process!
26. Your Mom, Dad or ADVANTAGE Tutor “help” you write your college essays.
27. Topic #1- Relating the tree outside of your bedroom window to your growth as a person
28. Topic #2- I once spent a day volunteering at a soup kitchen
29. Topic #3- How camp changed your life
30. Finding the “right” Sushi 12 school can then be broken up into 5 groups:
31. Group 1: “We’re pretty f’ing smart” – You applied early to Penn or Cornell and already had your Wall Street applications (Finance… WOO WOO!) ready for Summer Internships after your junior year of college.
32. Group 2: “We’re smart too” – You applied Early II to Emory and Wash U (Do they even have a football team? IDK, but apparently they’re great schools!)
33. Group 3: “We played sports, we were the hottest f’ing girls, and were much cooler than you in high school” – You applied early to Cornell knowing there was a better chance of you drinking whole milk than getting in. But still, it sounds good to say “I applied early to an Ivy!”
34. More realistically you applied to Michigan, Wisconsin, Syracuse, Maryland, GW, BU and Arizona. The list was overwhelming and you didn’t know what to do. So you made your college decision a matter of which school more of your camp friends were going to, or for bros, whichever school finished highest in the AP Polls.
35. Group 4: “We live for the nights we’ll never remember with the friends we’ll never forget” – You applied to Indiana and NO WHERE else. You would “DIE” if you didn’t get in.
36. Group 5: “We went to Phish concerts on weeknights in high school” – You applied to Vermont and your safety school was taking a year off and applying to Vermont again the following year. (I know, not a Sushi 12 school, but we all had one that got away. You never see this person again, at least in their high school form).

Spring Break Senior Year: “Ohhhhhh. We’re half way there!”

37. You meet your future freshman year roommate- dancing on a table to “Living on a Prayer”- during spring break in the Bahamas.
38. The Bahamas- Where the word “A-mazing” first really clicked.
39. You could not be more excited for the best 4 years of your life!
40. Every Sushbro in Training comes back knowing exactly what to do with a soft 17 in blackjack.
41. Speaking of gambling: Poker- every single Sushbro in Training, at one point in their life thought they were the next Matt Damon from Rounders. (“If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker!”)
42. And gambling for every future Sushette in Training- YUCK!

The End of Senior Year: “I hope you had the time of your life!”

43. You visit your camp bestie in New York City (Wait a minute, you like grew up there? What was that like? So jeal!)
44. You buy a fake ID (California or Maryland) at a shady place by NYU. You are either really excited, nervous or horrified that a kid from the movie “Kids” will come and mug you.
45. The suburbs were so boring… But I wouldn’t trade them for anything!
46. Most likely you had friends that were cooler than you in high school.
47. Most likely they’re now either living at home, in their 6th year of college, or in rehab.
48. If the person from #47 grew up in New York City, then after 6 years of college and a stint in rehab he now runs his own Hedge Fund (So excited I now know that word means!)… “Thanks Dad!”
49. You look back fondly upon the Backstreet Boys and NSync and laugh that Nick Lachey got his start from 98 Degrees.
50. You remember vodka cranberries. (Remember, before the Atkins diet banned calories from our lives… and cranberry juice became… well… GROSS!)
51. ILY & ILYSM- the grandparents of abbrevs. There would be no besties or pretties without these.
52. You laugh about your 14th, 15th, or 16th birthday – maybe all of the above – which were celebrated at your local hibachi hotspot.
53. This was about the time you and the “Ghetto Butterflies” did your best to relate your real life group of friends to the cast of “Friends.”
54. Except Jordana and Ali both haaaaaddd to be Rachel!
55. You did teen tours or classes at UCLA (FOR COLLEGE CREDIT!) during the summer, unless you were a CIT and then a camp counselor or maybe… basketball camps!
56. Your final GPA ended up somewhere above 4.0 (All Sushi 12 feeder schools give the extra point for AP/honors courses (you took 40 of those).
57. For Sushbros in training- your backpack- LL Bean or Jansport? #TheDecision.
58. For Sushettes in training- herve chapeliers or longchamp bags? (DON’T MESS THIS ONE UP!)
59. You drove your first car- a 2001 Audi A4 (your parents were rich), a 2000 Jetta (your parents were protective) or a 1999 dark SUV (you’re a guy)
60. You attended your final Dave Matthews Concert as a high schooler- unless, of course, you grew up in New York city, in which case you had NO IDEA who Dave Matthews was until you got to college… You were too busy listening to Wu Tang and growing up “WAY TOO FAST!”

The Summer Before College: “Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

61. It had to be done. The first time you went into the office you were too scared and ran away. But after Lindsay went for her Sweet 16 present and then Ali and Jordana went just a few weeks ago, you decided to go through with it… And now your nose looks totes A-mazing!
62. And so you are finally ready to become a member of the Sushi 12 … SO EXCITING!
63. You can’t wait to go to school with exclusively Sushi from the accredited feeder schools.
64. That is, except the one kid who had NO IDEA what Sushi was before he got to college. You know, the token kid from (Gasp…The middle of America) who when he went to college had his life turned upside down: “I never met Sushi before coming to Sushi Tech.” (Ahh… Puppy). But after four years in SushiVille he is engaged to a Sushette and working finance in New York. And he wears scarves! VICTORY!

The end!

I end with 64 for a reason… You guessed it.

Sushi Madness is next! The Sushi 12 will be my next and potentially final post! Follow me on Twitter HERE for updates on new posts! The MADNESS begins some time in the next couple of weeks!